October
9, 2003

PHOTO BY LAUREN HEATON

Adam
Marple, who will direct the Yellow Springs High School fall play,
‘The Tempest,’ by William Shakespeare, working with
students, including Erin Silvert-Noftle, left, and Pia LaPalombara,
during a rehearsal at the school this week.

Working
on short schedule, director is up for challenge

The YSHS drama club
got the answer to its 11th-hour prayers two weeks ago when Principal John
Gudgel announced that a new director had been selected for the fall play.

With just over one
month to choose the play, hold auditions, find a performance space and
put up a production, most of the getting-to-know-you will have to happen
along the way.

The new director,
Adam Marple, has few reservations and is trusting that leadership and
ideas from the students will ensure the production has a successful run.

The first thing the
Yellow Springs High School theater club did after Marple’s selection
was meet to jointly decide on this fall’s play. The students said
they wanted both drama and comedy, a small cast as well as a strong technical
role, and the physical challenge of stage combat, Marple said. And they
wanted to do something by Shakespeare, which would be a first for the
students. Marple went home to think about it, and somewhere between the
80-minute drive home to Cincinnati and the drive back up for auditions,
he came up with Shakespeare’s last work, The Tempest.

“I’m
thoroughly excited, and the students are gung-ho,” Marple said.
“We’ve got a bit less than a month, and it’s going to
be a challenge. That’s good, I like challenges.”

Sliding in at the
last minute as an unknown young director to a position formerly occupied
by a successful and well-liked Marcia Nowik presented its own challenges,
Marple said. He was scared at first, he said, because he had heard from
many parents and administrators that the students loved Nowik.

“But the parents
were more worried than the kids,” Marple said. “I’ve
been completely welcomed in by the students, and I want to create as many
opportunities for them as I can.”

After 10 years of
working on YSHS theater productions, Nowik was not selected to direct
the fall play because members of the tech crew last spring spent one night
at the Antioch Theater. While the students had parental permission for
the overnight, Nowik failed to approve the activity with either school
officials or the Antioch Theater.

In addition, YSHS
must find a new performance space this year after Louise Smith, chair
of the Antioch Theater department, decided Antioch needs to take a “break”
from hosting YSHS productions.

This fall Marple
wants students to add input and have as much say as possible in creating
their characters and designing costumes, the set and lights. He wants
to create a collaborative atmosphere so the students feel like they own
their work.

“Everyone’s
more committed, you’re more willing to sacrifice and invest yourself
and your time for something that is yours,” he said. “You
leave carrying it with you and you can look back and say, ‘that
was mine.’ ”

Though the students
haven’t had much time with their new director, they think they will
like working with him and having some influence over their project.

“He’s
young and he’s easygoing, that’s what I liked,” thespian
officer Rose Byrnes said. “But I think the most credit is due to
Mr. Gudgel for including us in a lot of the decision making.”

The change in both
the process and the director is something Valerie Blackwell-Truitt, president
of the Yellow Springs Theater Arts Association Board, said will improve
the program. After a decade of working with mostly one director, allowing
students to experience someone with a different style and different ideas
teaches them to adapt and gives them confidence to work with others, she
said.

The board also wanted
students to understand that they could create a good production no matter
who the director was, Blackwell-Truitt said.

“We’re
doing our best as a community to make sure the theater continues and to
keep moving forward for the kids,” she said. “Adam has a ton
of enthusiasm and a lot of fresh ideas, and I think he’s going to
be great.”

In contrast to recent
high school productions, Marple said one of his strengths is putting on
cheap, simple shows. He uses a method of paring that he learned from an
Italian director while he was studying abroad as a Wright State University
acting major. He learned to simplify by asking what can be left out and
what is absolutely necessary to convey the idea to the audience.

“I do poor
theater,” he said. “I feel confident in my ability to adapt,
work around obstacles, to improvise.”

All that is necessary
for theater is actors, an audience, a space and lights, he said. He said
that lights are especially important in a large space such as the high
school gym, where the drama club is considering staging the show. The
Glen Helen Building and the Mills Lawn School gym are other options.

Adapting to any new
space will take a large technical crew, which is good because the cast
consists of just 11 people, while there are 20 on the tech crew. When
he asked students whether they would prefer tech or acting, Marple was
happily surprised to learn that every single person agreed to do either,
or both.

The big crew will
have a new tech director to work with as well this year. Marple recommended
Wright State University student Janice Potter, who was the tech director
for his senior production, The Inferno, last spring. He said that Potter
is “more than qualified” and that she will simplify, expedite
and serve as a voice of reason for the show.

Blackwell-Truitt
said that several other local and regional directors expressed interest
in taking on the YSHS play this fall, but due to the short notice of the
three-week search, Marple was the only person who applied for the position.
He came highly recommended by local actor and WSU theater professor Bruce
Cromer, and he is fired up to make the Nov. 6 opening.